In the bread baking industry a lot of energy is consumed for heating bread and conventionally this heat energy is subsequently lost to the ambient environment inter alia as the breads are allowed to cool on racks somewhere close to the ovens. As the ovens also produces a lot of waste heat, the environment in an industrial bakery is very warm. Hence, there exists a desire to minimize the waste heat in order to save energy and to ameliorate the environment in industrial bakeries.
The American patent publication U.S. Pat. No. 4,331,690 discloses a method of rapidly cooling freshly baked bread in a vacuum cooling chamber. It has proven advantageous to cool bread in a vacuum chamber since it gives the bread improved properties with respect to both taste and shelf-life. However, with the method described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,331,690 it also implies yet another energy consumer and in some respect also another heat generator.
Hence, for environmental reasons, both global and specific to the baking location, it is desirable to reduce energy consumption and heat generation during cooling of freshly baked bread.